Principal Investigator:
Jon C. Reiten
Montana Tech of The University of Montana

Abstract

Decades of underground coal mining have resulted in acid mine drainage (AMD),
which is contaminating ground-water and surface-water resources at Belt. Although
mining ended about 50 years ago, water with a pH of 2.94 is still issuing
from mine workings adjacent to and near town. The acid mine drainage is lowering
the pH of Belt Creek and increasing trace metals concentration in the stream.
The creek cannot support fish below Belt and is discharging acidic, metal-laden
water to the Missouri River. By age dating ground water the recharge source
entering the mine may be determined.

The overall goal is to restore the water quality of Belt Creek by reducing
non-point pollution, improve stream habitat, restore native fish populations,
and improve ground-water quality of the alluvial aquifer by improving the
quality of the recharge. The goal of this project is to define the hydrogeologic
regime in the vicinity of Belt so that recharge to old mine workings, the
source of acid mine drainage, can be delineated with a reasonable level of
certainty. Age dating the water by testing for tritium and chlorofluorocarbons
will provide useful information for determining the source of recharge to
abandoned mine workings. With this knowledge, best-management practices can
be developed to reduce generation of acidic discharges. Hydrogeologic data
and water-quality information will be used to calculate changes in recharge
rates, ground-water flow rates, and acid mine drainage discharges under various
scenarios and combinations of cropping, dewatering, or other techniques that
might be found to be appropriate.